Phoronix

A number of x86-related changes were sent out today for the first full day of the Linux 5.9 merge window...

There didn't appear to be much usage ever out of the AMD HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) support within the GCC compiler and hadn't been maintained in a while so now has been wiped out of the GNU Compiler Collection...

With more eyes on Btrfs given the file-system is set to become the default for Fedora 33 desktop spins, there are some interesting performance optimizations coming to Btrfs with the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel...

Linux kernel developers are working on tightening up the access around GPL-only kernel symbols and kernel shims that interface with proprietary kernel modules. This latest work is being driven by code recently put out for improving the Linux networking code where NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver would be the initial consumer...

The Linux Foundation in cooperation with many hardware and software vendors have announced the Open-Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) for improving open-source security...

Vulkan 1.2.149 is out today and its lone new extension is yet another addition to the Vulkan API for helping translation layers like DXVK map other graphics APIs on top...

Linux 5.8 is one of the biggest releases in a while but that newly-stable kernel also means a lot of the new drivers need to be stripped out or otherwise modified over being reliant on binary-only firmware/microcode or contingent upon other dependencies deemed not free to the Free Software Foundation standards...

After being worked on a number of months, the FSCRYPT file-system encryption framework for the Linux kernel is enabling inline encryption support with the 5.9 kernel...

GNOME could soon be playing nicely with deep color displays that aim to offer more realistic color reproduction thanks to the greater bit depth for each color component...

It's arguably long overdue but with the just-opened Linux 5.9 kernel cycle the Unicore32 CPU architecture is being removed...

Libinput 1.16 is out this morning as the newest feature update to this input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X11 and Wayland...

In addition to the many outlined changes expected for Linux 5.9, here's another big one: lots of IO_uring work for enhancing this modern Linux I/O interface...

Linus Torvalds was debating up to the last minutes today of whether to opt for Linux 5.8-rc8 or go ahead and release Linux 5.8 as stable... He opted for Linux 5.8 splashing down on this historic day...

DragonFlyBSD has been generally working out well for AMD Zen systems sans a few motherboard specific woes, but now is getting even better thanks to importing some new drivers from FreeBSD...

Facebook engineer Song Liu has sent out a set of patches for "BPF_PROG_TYPE_USER" as a new BPF type for the Linux kernel focused on better supporting user programs...

The Linux 5.9 kernel merge window will open up immediately upon the release of Linux 5.8, which is expected to happen this evening unless Linus Torvalds decides to stave it off for one week to allow for additional testing. In any case, once Linux 5.9 kicks off there are a lot of changes expected...

Incredibly it has taken until now with Wine-Staging 5.14 to implement more than just a stub to Wine's FINDSTR program implementation. Yes, the long-standing command to search for strings...

A few days back we wrote of Intel's ISPC compiler landing GPU code generation support for their UHD/Iris/Xe Graphics from Gen9 Skylake and beyond. Following that code being merged, ISPC 1.14.0 was quickly tagged...

Even with the coronavirus pandemic, the distributed open-source and Linux communities continue advancing with great new features and improvements. During the course of July on Phoronix were 266 original news articles and another 15 featured Linux hardware reviews / benchmark featured articles...

While some platforms like Netmarketshare have reported increases month-over-month for Linux desktop usage, that doesn't appear to be translating similarly to the Linux gaming market-share, or at least not at the rate Steam is growing on Windows and macOS. Valve has just published their July 2020 numbers that are part of the Steam Survey...